George Campbell (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

That is a first—to your commentary in respect of this issue and particularly the point you make that these amendments are about ensuring that the employee’s position, to the extent that you can, is protected. Obviously if that is the case it has not been protected in the past. But I fail to understand the logic you then use to say that, if the focus is about protecting the right of the employee, why it is not possible to put in a provision that says that the Workplace Authority Director cannot or will not provide the employee with reasons why the provisions of an agreement are unfair. We are talking about agreements that apply in the main to people of non-English-speaking backgrounds. We know that from the Employment Advocate’s evidence in Senate estimates of the past that they have actually sent letters in English to people of non-English-speaking backgrounds who have had no capacity to comprehend what is in those letters. We know that there are a substantial number of workers in low-paid jobs and a lot of workers with limited education backgrounds who are dealing with the confrontation of these agreements on a daily basis.

If those workers do not know, if they are not told the circumstances under which an agreement is unfair, are you seriously expecting them to go to the Office of Workplace Services, to hire a lawyer, or to get an advocate from somewhere—on $300 or $400 a week? Are you seriously suggesting that that is available to them? You know as well as I do that, at the end of the day, they will be forced to accept whatever is told to them by the employer. But, if the circumstances are of such a character that there is unfairness identified by the Workplace Authority Director in an agreement, what is the logic that says you cannot tell the person who is being unfairly treated—particularly the employee, if that is who you are setting out to defend—where the unfairness is? On what you have just said, I cannot comprehend why you would take that position.